Little known state grant gets Vanderburgh County farmer out of a jam

Pigeon Creek, dammed by debris, was eroding cornfield

JESSIE HIGGINS / Courier & Press
Charlie Wagner, left, and Henry Bigge of Bigge Excavation pose before about 200 tons of woody debris that had previously jammed Pigeon Creek where it flowed through Wagner’s property in northern Vanderburgh County. The jam was slowly diverting the creek toward one of Wagner’s cornfields until Vanderburgh County applied and received a grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to remove the jam.

Mark Abell / Vanderburgh County Soil & Water Conservation District
Several hundred tons of logs, road signs, tires and other debris jammed up Pigeon Creek where it ran through farmer Charlie Wagner’s property in northern Vanderburgh County. Wagner said the jam formed in 2009 after an ice storm and was rerouting the stream toward one of Wagner’s cornfields.$RETURN$$RETURN$

JESSIE HIGGINS / Courier & Press
Henry Bigge of Bigge Excavation, left, looks on as Charlie Wagner looks at some of the items recovered from a log jam on Pigeon Creek which runs through Wagner’s property in northern Vanderburgh County.

Mark Abell / Vanderburgh County Soil & Water Conservation District
Several hundred tons of logs, road signs, tires and other debris jammed Pigeon Creek where it ran through farmer Charlie Wagner’s property in northern Vanderburgh County. Wagner said the jam formed in 2009 after an ice storm and was rerouting the stream toward one of Wagner’s cornfields.

Mark Abell / Vanderburgh County Soil & Water Conservation District
Several hundred tons of logs, road signs, tires and other debris jammed Pigeon Creek where it ran through farmer Charlie Wagner’s property in northern Vanderburgh County. Wagner said the jam formed in 2009 after an ice storm and was rerouting the stream toward one of Wagner’s cornfields.

EVANSVILLE - It wasn't long after the big ice storm in 2009 that farmer Charlie Wagner saw he had a problem.

The creek that skirts the back side of his cornfields was clogged. Several tons of trees, branches, road signs and other junk had gotten hung up somewhere along the bank, creating a natural dam. With each passing storm, and each passing flood, more wood piled up.

In a slow motion display of water's power, Pigeon Creek began to change course around the obstruction — eating away the bank and inching toward Wagner's cornfields.

"In five years the creek would have been out here," Wagner said, standing near the edge of one of his cornfields Wednesday afternoon. "It was changing course. We were losing creek bank, and more trees were getting pulled in as the creek moved further west."

A log jam and resulting erosion is a natural occurrence, and in 2009 there was little Wagner could do to stop it. Land owners are allowed to use chain saws and other machines to remove jams, but the sheer size of the Pigeon Creek jam made that unfeasible. By 2013 the log pile spanned the creek, was about the length of two football fields and more than six feet high.

Although he didn't know it, Wagner's jam was exactly the type of river project a group of Indiana legislators in 2011 successfully pushed the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to fund.

Wagner called the Vanderburgh County Commissioners in 2012 to see if they could help. The county does not have funding for such projects, and it took some research to discover that DNR had begun offering grants the year before.

Once officials discovered the DNR's Lake and River Enhancement Program log jam grant, it was a quick turnaround to get the money.

"The state measures log jams from levels one to five," said Mark Abell, a water quality expert with Vanderburgh County Soil and Water Conservation District. "After the (specialist) from the state saw it, he classified this log jam as a level six."

The jam was later legally classified as a level four, meaning the entire waterway was blocked, but no endangered species were being harmed.

Contractors usually wait until late summer, when water levels are lowest, to remove a jam from a creek. But waiting those extra months would have made this jam even larger. So Henry Bigge, with Bigge Excavation, hit the pile in March shortly after the $43,000 grant was received.

"Henry's a dare devil," Wagner said Wednesday afternoon. He and Bigge were standing beneath the roughly 200-ton pile of debris Bigge removed from the creek. "A lot of guys wouldn't go out and do that in spring."

In the end, Wagner lost about 30 feet of river bank and numerous trees around the log jam area. But the creek is still a safe distance from his crops.

And now that they're aware of the new grant, funded through annual boater registration fees, officials at Vanderburgh County's Soil and Water Conservation District plan to float Pigeon Creek later this summer to identify other problem log jams that might qualify for removal.

"We've heard that there are some other log jams on down the creek," said Mark Cambron, Vanderburgh County's District Conservationist. "We're going to get out there and find out if they're big enough."